Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Paul Gowder is spot on about Prop 8: It’s appalling how children were used in this campaign, from the shameful lies about the schools to the garbage appeals to non-science about the quality of gay parents to the fact that children were trotted out on street corners by both sides to wear signs. And as we know, that sort of shit is always a trigger for American voters — there’s no better way to get people to do idiotic things — live in the suburbs, support all kinds of censorship, deny basic civil and human rights to their fellow citizens — than to wave some kid in front of them and have it drop a single tear.

Seriously. Parents in this country just need to toughen up. Can you imagine a civilized country where all you have to do is say “think about the kids,” and the public will vote for whatever kind of fascism strikes your fancy?

All I'll add is that the 'think of the children' brigade seems incapable of thinking of the gay children. In all likelihood, there will always be more children turning out to be gay than kids raised by same-sex couples. Children who, upon adolescence, notice they like members of the same sex are far more likely to be depressed/sexually-reckless/what-have-you if they live in a society in which they cannot aspire to one day having a family of their own.

9 comments:

Advances in genetic screening, combined with the right to abortion, will soon drastically reduced the number of gay children world-wide, and moderately reduce it in the US. Over the generations, more and more gay children will be born proportionately from pro-life families, as the genetic predisposition is weeded out from the rest.

That has got to be about the dumbest argument I've ever heard for gay marriage: they'll be more depressed if the government won't let them get married?? We're talking about teenagers here, right? How many hormone-drenched teenagers base their behavior on what societal marriage laws are? Not only should a claim like this have some actual evidence behind it, it should at least show some knowledge of the people whose behavior is being predicted.

Fuzzyface: seriously? You think that teenagers who are told that society disapproves of their relationships and that they won't be able, one day, to marry those who they love aren't going to react badly? WTF?

Do you think that there weren't teenagers who dated across racial lines who were depressed about the anti-miscegenation laws and reacted badly? Since when do teenagers not thing "I'm infatuated with this person, I'd like to marry them some day?" Since when do teenagers not notice that they are being given second-class status? It seems to me that Phoebe is exactly right.

You know, here I'm not sure how much anti-miscegenation laws posed the same problem. Surely teenagers did have this situation, met someone they wanted to spend their life with but couldn't. Terrible, but the situation for gay teens is perhaps worse. If you're gay, it doesn't matter if you know you're not ending up with your high-school sweetheart; your sweetheart at 30, whoever he is, will also be same-sex. Attraction to only one sex is no doubt both more common and more hardwired (biologically or otherwise) than attraction to only one race.

I should add another point, though it isn't in regard to whether marriage should be changed or not. It has to do with the idea that gays suffer more than straights, which I believe to be true.

But, I also believe that so many people suffer more than other groups.

Trim and fit people will be looked upon approvingly as fat people won't.

The short man is going to be less accepted as the tall man.

The pretty will have benefits the ugly will not.

Of course, I know that these people can marry. That isn't the point.

The point is that it is not entirely wrong to express an approval of one thing over the other, especially if this is "hardwired" into the brains of people, which I tend to believe it is.

Even if gay marriage became legal everywhere, this antipathy towards homosexuality is going to remain, especially since it contradicts the most primal aspect of the species, which is regeneration. It might lessen, perhaps, but it isn't going to go away.

Is this an argument for keeping marriage exclusively a male-female institution? Not really, but using the depression rate amongst gays as a reason for gay marriage isn’t a particularly good argument either.

Even if gay marriage became legal everywhere, this antipathy towards homosexuality is going to remain, especially since it contradicts the most primal aspect of the species, which is regeneration. It might lessen, perhaps, but it isn't going to go away.

This sounds ridiculous. I thought homosexuality was OK before I ever met an out gay person, simply because I was raised in an oddly gender equal way (probably because I had only sisters), so I don't think that one's sex is all that important. Once you stop thinking that the most important thing about someone is what is between his or her legs, homosexuality is an equally good choice as heterosexuality. You like boys? I like boys! I see no crucial difference between us that means you shouldn't like boys!

A society that more closely approximates sex equality will be a less heterosexist society as well.